Sarah and Mitchell

How We Met

How we met? It’s kind of a funny story. In my first year of college, I was volunteering at a junior high event with 600+ kids in November 2011. I noticed this guy who was doing some filming for it and realized he was pretty cute. I left it at that. I went back to school after that weekend and didn’t think about it again. March 2012 comes around and my school was holding a March Break event for students wanting to check out the school. I saw him again. In my head I was like, “man, he’s good looking!” but then two seconds later I saw him with his girlfriend. Typical.

He ended up coming to the school as a student in September 2012. I was the social convener for the school that year so I had to go on the first year boot camp. I don’t know if I realized he was there, but all he remembers of our first interaction was him asking me where the bathroom was during boot camp. (That’s all just a distant memory for me). After that, I gave him my number in the first few days but quickly started dating someone else. And then someone else. Who knew that he liked me?

March 2014 during final papers and assignments, we were sitting in the schools lobby, chatting for hours and listening to playlists on 8tracks. (This was a nightly occurrence). All of a sudden he looks at me and says, “I need to tell you something.” “What?” “I like you.”

..uh oh.

I told him repeatedly, “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to lose him as one of my best friends if we dated and didn’t work out. Fast forward two months. I go to Brazil. One of my best friends who was in Brazil with me asked me who I would send a letter to if I could only send one. I said, “Mitch”. (After my mom, of course!). She was like, “huh.” and left the room.

Fast forward to September 4th. First day back at school. His 3rd year, my 4th. He asked me to be his girlfriend. I said, “YES!”. kidding. I actually said no and then told him to ask me again. (I was so nervous and so excited!). I said yes, and here we go!

How He Asked

Holy Smokes! Do you ever wake up and tell yourself, “this is the day I’m going to get engaged?”. Well, that happened to me a few times in the summer of 2015, but it never happened. I left it alone. All of a sudden, I’m sitting in a movie theatre watching the Intern (Anne Hathaway- Yes!), and found myself processing a conversation right before the movie. “Hey, want to go skating tomorrow morning?” With my extensive figure skating background, I said “of course!”. We had never gone skating together before, so I was so excited. Except I realized that the next day was a Monday.

Who goes public skating on a Monday morning? Maybe mom+tots?

Mitch had to go “help move some furniture” for his friend coincidentally at 8:30AM. He said he would come back to pick me up. I woke up that morning, kind of annoyed because I didn’t know when he was coming back and I was hungry. But that morning I would up, took my time to get ready, and I didn’t have a feeling that he was going to propose, but something in my soul was.. quiet.

Mitch comes back and picks me up. He hugs me before we leave and it was the strongest hug I have ever gotten from him. It lingered, too. I just wanted to eat breakfast and go skating.

We get to the arena (around 10:12AM), walk downstairs to the ice rinks, and the lights were all shut off in the first rink. I told Mitch that I don’t think we should be here. Nobody is here. The lights are off. He said, “Don’t worry”, and brought me into the first change room. I got my skates on, confused. We walk to the second ice rink and the lights were shut off. Except it wasn’t completely dark. I open the door, our song was playing, we skate into centre ice (that was covered with white christmas lights), and he asks me to marry him in the very middle of the rink. Ice lights off, Christmas lights on. I said yes, but it didn’t really hit me. We skated over to the boards and it turns out Mitch’s best friend was there, and so was mine!

As soon as I saw her, THAT’S when I started crying uncontrollably. It was real. The two of us went out to brunch right after. The waitress asked me what I wanted and I just started crying. I told her, “I’m sorry, I just got engaged!”

Even just thinking about our story makes me so happy. He genuinely surprised me and did it in a way that meant so much to me!